


Make Life Take the Lemons Back

by MoragMacPherson



Series: Go Make Some New Disaster [1]
Category: Portal (Video Game), Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon, Supernatural AU: Croatoan/End'verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-04
Updated: 2012-04-04
Packaged: 2017-11-03 00:58:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoragMacPherson/pseuds/MoragMacPherson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chell is outside.  Where does she go from here?  And where did she come from in the first place?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Life Take the Lemons Back

**Author's Note:**

> Contains major spoilers for both Portal games. Many lines (including the title) are direct quotations, in part because they're the only words that Chell has heard for the last-however-many years. And if you're curious about the timeline, let's just go with the handwave of constant travel between physically impossible spatial portals also has a strange effect on time.

No Party Associate appears to drag you back inside and after a few minutes of awkward uncertainty, you walk away. Well, first you put together a sledge to drag the Companion Cube along with you (it is _weighted_ after all, but it's not like you're going to leave it behind), but then you walk and you try to remember.  
  
You don't remember much. You don't remember where Aperture's facilities are, or where you'd lived before you'd been trapped there. You don't remember your father's face, just his hands and his voice -- both features warm, large, kind. You do remember your mother (but not her name) and you know that while you got your father's coloring and passion for science, you took your mother's features, figure, and attitude.  
  
The big problem is you don't really remember what people look like. There'd been that one picture of Cave Johnson and Caroline, but it's not like you'd had time to really study it. You use the portals once or twice to get a look at yourself. GLaDOS had been lying, you're pretty sure. There's no way you're overweight, because among other things, you're _starving_ .  
  
You take the time to hunt in the woods. It's not hard, once you're used to thinking with portals, and once you figure out the kinds of surfaces outside that will support a portal. You see a deer and you think of GLaDOS and you let it run free. Instead you decide to trap birds. You know how to pluck a goose and start a fire to roast it on —your mom taught you that, didn't she? On one of your weekend trips, because Mom didn't live with you and Dad. She had another husband, another daughter—your half-sister, whom you don't remember at all. It wasn't because Mom didn't love you, Chell, but because she and Dad never seemed to stop fighting.  
  
You walk through the woods, along ruined roads, through overgrown fields. The Companion Cube never threatens to stab you and does not, in fact, speak. Which is almost disappointing. Then again, it's the sound of human voice that you really crave, not another machine. You think that if you hear another human voice, maybe then you could work up the courage to try to use your own again. But you don't find any humans; not any that speak, anyway.  
  
GLaDOS had mentioned she was the only thing protecting the facility from "them." One of the few instances when she wasn't enhancing the truth. The creatures— the "them"—you find look sort of like you, sort of like humans, but they don't speak. They growl and snarl and run and try to bite you, hunting in packs. You don't know what they are, but you know that they're new and that, as terrible as testing had been, something worse has taken place outside.

But they're not difficult to avoid, not when you're used to thinking with portals, and even easier to kill, which you find that you do with surprisingly little remorse, but no real satisfaction either. GLaDOS is wrong.  You're not a monster.  
  
It's been more than a week, you think. The sun rises and sets nine times, and that means a day has passed. You don't remember the last time you'd seen the sun and the first night you feel... fear, you think. But it's not like you're going to give up. You don't have it in you.  
  
And then, one day, you walk into a fence, one that hasn't been run down. It looks like the sort of things that humans have to work on to keep together, to keep the things out. So you follow it, because where there's a fence, there will eventually be a gate.  
  
The humans find you before you find the gate. They appear suddenly, riding a loud machine -- a jeep or a truck, you think. It lets out foul smoke, nothing like any of the machines back at Aperture. The machine stops and two of the humans jump out of it. They have stern faces and carry guns—not portal guns like yours, but much simpler devices that can kill without bending the laws of physics. You're not really afraid of the guns, but you are caught frozen at the sight of the people.  
  
One is a woman, like you— very much like you, if a little older. Tall and thin and dark haired and with an expression you remember means that she's perfectly willing to use that gun, but she doesn't necessarily want to. She's the one who speaks first, and she speaks to you. "Oh, you're not a Croat, are you, little one?"  
  
"What the hell are you packing?" says the other person, the man. His voice is neither warm nor gentle nor kind— it's so devoid of any of those things that you think they must have been beaten or tested out of him. He snaps his rough fingers in your face, rude and intrusive. "Do you speak-y the English?"  
  
"Dean!" the woman snaps, then turns to look back at you. "Habla español, pobrecita?" she asks. "Cómo te llama?"  
  
You don't speak Spanish -- at least, not well. Your father taught you a few phrases. He hadn't grown up in this country, but another one, where everyone spoke Spanish. No, you speak English.  
  
Or at least, you try to. You feel your eyes start to water with frustration: this shouldn't be that hard. But it's not in you to give up. It takes you a few tries but after swallowing around a lump in your throat that isn't really there four or five times, you finally croak out, "My name is Chell, and no, I'm not a Croat. I'm a..." Test subject? Not anymore. "I'm a survivor."  
  
The man laughs and even though it's harsh, it has just the smallest hint of warmth, like at his core, this man — Dean—still hasn't quite given up all hope. "Aren't we all?" he says. He lowers his gun and approaches you; that must be what people do, so you lower your gun too. Dean pats you on the back, and yes, his hands are rough, but they are also so very warm and full of life. "Chell, you said?" You nod. "Chell, welcome to Camp Chitaqua."


End file.
